A journal of the beautiful and the fun things in life.

August 27, 2009

Kennedy's "good ending"

There are certain qualities that intuitively make one like another person. A certain quality that meets the other person's essential quality and together they recognise each other. I love people who manifest a certain Joie de Vivre. I like alot people like the late Edward Kennedy: he enjoyed being alive to the end.

Soon after he was diagnosed, "he spoke of having a “good ending for myself,” in whatever time he had left, and by every account, he did.

As recently as a few days ago, Mr. Kennedy was still digging into big bowls of mocha chip and butter crunch ice creams, all smushed together (as he liked it). He and his wife, Vicki, had been watching every James Bond movie and episode of “24” on DVD.

He began each morning with a sacred rite of reading his newspapers, drinking coffee and scratching the bellies of his beloved Portuguese water dogs, Sunny and Splash, on the front porch of his Cape Cod house overlooking Nantucket Sound.

If he was feeling up to it, he would end his evenings with family dinner parties around the same mahogany table where he used to eat lobster with his brothers".

He always admired people who took riskshe still got out of bed every day “Every day is a gift,” was his mantra to begin conversations, said Peter Meade, a friend

“This is someone who had a fierce determination to live, but who was not afraid to die,” said Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat and a Kennedy friend whose district includes Cape Cod. “And he was not afraid to have a lot of laughs until he got there.”

He also "leaned heavily on his faith. In recent years, friends say, Mr. Kennedy had come to lean heavily on his Roman Catholic faith. In eulogizing his mother, Rose Kennedy, in 1995, he spoke of the comfort of religious beliefs. “She sustained us in the saddest times by her faith in God, which was the greatest gift she gave us,” Mr. Kennedy said, his voice stammering.Mr. Kennedy spent his last hours in prayer, Father Tarrant told a Boston television station, WCVB-TV.